Dinner's ready!

Our cats are fed alternatively with chicken carcasses or beef meat (bones, ribs or steaks). Twice a week, food amount is reduced in order to prevent obesity problems and facilitate returns into the buildings each evening for security reasons (except for the lynxes who stay outside all year round and are fasted two days a week). Vitamins and mineral supplements are regularly added to the food to limit calcium and vitamin deficiency.

In the wild, zebras, wildebeests, buffalos, impalas and warthogs, as well as giraffes are the natural prey of lions.
Tigers feed mostly on deer and wild pigs.
Jaguars can kill almost every prey they encounter: from capybara to caiman, including river turtles and sloths.
African leopards are highly adaptable and their diet consists largely of mammals of varying sizes. Snow leopards of Asian mountains prey on wild goats (markhor, bharal, ibex) but also on marmots, hares and pheasants.
The cheetah is specialized on gazelles and hunts Thomson and Grant gazelle as well as impalas. The Iranian cheetah mainly feeds on hares or ground-living birds.
As for the lynx, depending on its species (bobcat, canadian, eurasian or iberian lynx), it mainly preys on lagomorphs (hares, rabbits), birds and/or small ungulates (deer, chamois).

The prey is either suffocated (gripped by the throat or the muzzle) or bitten in the neck with severing of the jugular vein, the carotid artery or the spinal cord. Cats have shorter skull and mandibles that improve the efficiency and power of their bite compared to other carnivores (except Mustelidae).

Each subdivision of the dentition has specific functions: the carnassial teeth (fourth upper premolar and first lower molar) are very sharp and used to cut the flesh. Canines, long and pointed, maintain and kill the prey. Incisors are not much used.

Below the photography of a lioness skull followed by a video showing some of our cats eating their evening meal! It is distributed in late afternoon in their night cages (except for lynxes who have dinner outside all year round). Enjoy!